WEBVTT - Disorganized Crime, Pt. 4 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:06.120 Col Zone Media. 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:11.440 On December eighth, two thousand, a bishop ordained a new 0:00:11.480 --> 0:00:15.760 minister in his church. The procedure for this sort of 0:00:15.800 --> 0:00:20.000 thing varies depending on the denomination, but in this case, 0:00:20.680 --> 0:00:24.119 the ceremony didn't take place in a church. There was 0:00:24.160 --> 0:00:27.440 no ceremony, and there wasn't really much of a church 0:00:27.520 --> 0:00:30.760 to speak of. There is not even any evidence that 0:00:30.800 --> 0:00:32.199 these two men ever met. 0:00:31.960 --> 0:00:32.680 Face to face. 0:00:34.479 --> 0:00:37.879 The ordination took place through the mail, and by the 0:00:37.880 --> 0:00:41.080 time William Fink was holding the envelope containing his certificate 0:00:41.080 --> 0:00:47.400 of ordination, it had already been opened. Federal prisons opened 0:00:47.400 --> 0:00:49.640 most of the male sent to the people they house. 0:00:51.200 --> 0:00:53.880 A few years into his fourteen year sentence for beating 0:00:53.880 --> 0:00:56.320 a man to death while working as a corrections officer 0:00:56.360 --> 0:01:01.360 in New Jersey, Fink felt divinely called to reinterpret the Bible. 0:01:02.680 --> 0:01:06.600 He even learned ancient Greek to create his own translations 0:01:06.600 --> 0:01:11.679 of Biblical texts, all in service of proving that Jewish 0:01:11.720 --> 0:01:16.360 people were the descendants of Satan. And this certificate made 0:01:16.400 --> 0:01:23.800 it official he was a Christian identity minister. Today, William 0:01:23.840 --> 0:01:27.080 Fink is one of the leading purveyors of Christian identity propaganda. 0:01:28.440 --> 0:01:36.240 The man who ordained him. Frank Smith is dead. I'm 0:01:36.240 --> 0:01:57.560 Molly Conger and this is where little guys. This is 0:01:57.600 --> 0:02:01.880 the story of Frank Smith's final evolution. He was a 0:02:01.920 --> 0:02:05.279 bank robber, a bomber, a hit man, a loan shark, 0:02:05.400 --> 0:02:08.560 a Nazi, and for the latter half of his life 0:02:09.360 --> 0:02:14.160 a minister. As a young man in the early nineteen fifties, 0:02:14.600 --> 0:02:17.240 he worked as a boxing promoter, but he kept getting 0:02:17.320 --> 0:02:21.600 arrested for bank robbery. If you believe a prosecutor in 0:02:21.680 --> 0:02:24.880 New York, he was also available as a murderer for hire. 0:02:26.560 --> 0:02:28.840 He had a reputation for being the guide to call 0:02:29.080 --> 0:02:32.480 when members of New England Organized crime needed something bombed. 0:02:34.320 --> 0:02:36.560 While he was in prison for blowing up a man's house, 0:02:37.080 --> 0:02:40.200 he read a few issues of the Rockwell Report, a 0:02:40.200 --> 0:02:43.480 newsletter written by American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell. 0:02:44.919 --> 0:02:47.560 He was so intrigued by Rockwell's message that he drove 0:02:47.600 --> 0:02:50.400 down to Virginia to meet the man. Just weeks after 0:02:50.440 --> 0:02:56.160 being released from prison in nineteen sixty five, Frank Smith 0:02:56.200 --> 0:03:00.639 had a proposition for the Nazi Party. He owned six 0:03:00.760 --> 0:03:03.600 hundred acres of land up in Maine that the Nazis 0:03:03.639 --> 0:03:07.919 could use to start a fake church. It would provide 0:03:07.960 --> 0:03:11.840 the party with some institutional legitimacy, and it would make 0:03:11.840 --> 0:03:16.160 it easier for the group to accept donations. After meeting 0:03:16.200 --> 0:03:19.440 with Rockwell, Frank reported back to a man in charge 0:03:19.680 --> 0:03:24.440 of a different organization, Raymond patriarcha head of the New 0:03:24.520 --> 0:03:29.800 England Mafia. He hoped that the two groups could have 0:03:29.840 --> 0:03:33.959 a mutually beneficial relationship, but it wasn't meant to be. 0:03:35.320 --> 0:03:37.600 Frank ran a foul of the mafia by ordering hits 0:03:37.600 --> 0:03:40.360 without permission from the boss, and he found himself on 0:03:40.400 --> 0:03:42.119 the wrong end of a gun one night in March 0:03:42.160 --> 0:03:47.160 of nineteen sixty five. After barely surviving the attempted hit, 0:03:48.080 --> 0:03:50.240 Frank went back down to Virginia to help out with 0:03:50.320 --> 0:03:54.080 Rockwell's campaign for governor. It was there that he met 0:03:54.080 --> 0:03:57.640 his wife, Claudia, one of the Nazi Party secretaries. 0:03:58.520 --> 0:03:59.280 For two years. 0:03:59.320 --> 0:04:01.840 Frank was an active member of the American Nazi Party 0:04:02.600 --> 0:04:06.080 and apparently a close friend of both George Lincoln Rockwell 0:04:06.560 --> 0:04:11.200 and Rockwell's mistress, Barbara von Getz. Rockwell even gave Frank 0:04:11.240 --> 0:04:16.599 a fun nickname, the Holy Father. He had, after all, 0:04:16.720 --> 0:04:19.360 approached Rockwell with the great idea of forming a whites 0:04:19.400 --> 0:04:26.320 only church. But Frank wasn't actually all that religious. He was, however, 0:04:26.960 --> 0:04:31.360 full of bullet holes from that botched mob hit. When 0:04:31.360 --> 0:04:35.280 they first met in early nineteen sixty five, the timing 0:04:35.320 --> 0:04:39.920 seemed perfect. Rockwell had been considering the possibility of hiding 0:04:39.960 --> 0:04:43.440 his Nazi rhetoric behind some kind of faux Christian front 0:04:43.760 --> 0:04:47.960 for years, and now here's Frank offering him the resources 0:04:47.960 --> 0:04:52.800 to bring that idea to life. Rockwell himself had no 0:04:52.920 --> 0:04:57.520 attachment to Christianity or religion of any kind, but he 0:04:57.560 --> 0:05:00.680 saw the political value in pretending his message was a 0:05:00.720 --> 0:05:03.520 Christian one, and he was in close contact with the 0:05:03.560 --> 0:05:08.720 burgeoning Christian identity movement. I think it bears repeating every 0:05:08.760 --> 0:05:14.039 time this comes up, which is not infrequently, But Christian 0:05:14.240 --> 0:05:22.200 identity means something specific, and it isn't Christianity. To say 0:05:22.200 --> 0:05:26.359 someone is an adherent of Christian identity isn't just another 0:05:26.400 --> 0:05:30.440 way of saying they are someone who identifies as a Christian. 0:05:31.560 --> 0:05:35.760 This isn't someone who is Methodist or Presbyterian or Catholic 0:05:35.920 --> 0:05:40.840 or anything like that. It isn't a Christian denomination and 0:05:40.880 --> 0:05:46.960 there's no real doctrinal unity among its adherents at its core, though, 0:05:47.720 --> 0:05:51.440 the one thing all Christian Identity adherents share is a 0:05:51.480 --> 0:05:56.760 commitment to a deeply racist, anti Semitic belief system centered 0:05:56.800 --> 0:06:02.000 around the idea that white Europeans are God's true chosen people. 0:06:04.200 --> 0:06:08.040 Rockwell knew that in the nineteen sixties. He was in 0:06:08.080 --> 0:06:10.800 contact with men like Wesley Swift, the father of the 0:06:10.880 --> 0:06:15.039 Christian Identity movement, and Richard Butler, the man who would 0:06:15.120 --> 0:06:17.640 later turned Swift's church into the Arian Nations. 0:06:19.440 --> 0:06:20.279 But Frank didn't. 0:06:21.600 --> 0:06:24.960 Frank was just a career criminal, an opportunist looking for 0:06:25.040 --> 0:06:28.400 a new way to get ahead, an organized crime. He 0:06:28.440 --> 0:06:31.719 didn't know a damn thing about anything besides collecting payments 0:06:31.720 --> 0:06:34.120 from guys who made bad bets on boxing matches. 0:06:36.720 --> 0:06:38.840 I'm dal stas a bunch of kids from the coach 0:06:38.920 --> 0:06:42.640 and they're telling me I'm of Israel. What is this 0:06:44.040 --> 0:06:47.720 I know about? I know all about the childs and 0:06:47.760 --> 0:06:53.560 the history. Right yeah, I'm telling here, I says, And 0:06:53.640 --> 0:06:56.160 that's telling me. I'm a chill. That's telling me I'm Israel. 0:07:00.160 --> 0:07:03.120 I don't know anything about ten trigsonless. 0:07:07.360 --> 0:07:10.400 When members of the American Nazi Party first explained Christian 0:07:10.440 --> 0:07:12.920 identity to Frank on his first visit down to the 0:07:12.920 --> 0:07:17.920 barracks in nineteen sixty five, he was offended. They said 0:07:17.920 --> 0:07:22.080 he was a descendant of the true Israelites, and he 0:07:22.120 --> 0:07:24.680 didn't know what that meant, so he thought they were 0:07:24.720 --> 0:07:28.200 accusing him of being Jewish. 0:07:28.720 --> 0:07:31.600 And we never discussed that either. I never knew of 0:07:31.600 --> 0:07:35.440 any particular faith. He had never asked them, stayed away 0:07:35.480 --> 0:07:40.480 from it. It was political. We tested that way. Political and racial. 0:07:41.720 --> 0:07:42.840 Absolutely racial. 0:07:46.000 --> 0:07:49.160 That's Frank describing the original plan he and Rockwell had 0:07:49.160 --> 0:07:54.880 for their partnership. He's remarkably candid in this interview. He 0:07:54.960 --> 0:07:57.120 has no problem admitting what was on his mind when 0:07:57.120 --> 0:08:01.320 he started down the path of forming his church. He's 0:08:01.360 --> 0:08:06.240 talking about nineteen sixty five, but that interview was recorded 0:08:06.280 --> 0:08:11.560 in twenty sixteen. You can probably tell, even just from 0:08:11.640 --> 0:08:16.200 the handful of clips I've used throughout this series, he's rambling. 0:08:17.400 --> 0:08:20.120 He sort of fades in and out, and he mumbles, 0:08:20.160 --> 0:08:23.320 and he doesn't finish all of his thoughts, and some 0:08:23.400 --> 0:08:25.280 of his thoughts seem to start in the middle, or 0:08:25.280 --> 0:08:30.600 he's reminiscing about things that don't quite make sense. He 0:08:30.720 --> 0:08:35.040 was ninety five years old in twenty sixteen, So even 0:08:35.080 --> 0:08:38.360 though I listened to the entire interview a few times. 0:08:39.480 --> 0:08:44.200 There's a lot missing there. So he's speaking very openly 0:08:44.559 --> 0:08:47.319 about how he knew this church idea was a scam 0:08:47.920 --> 0:08:50.000 when he first thought of it in nineteen sixty five. 0:08:51.720 --> 0:08:56.640 But there's no explanation offered of how or when or 0:08:56.720 --> 0:09:01.920 why he changed his mind, because I think he did. 0:09:02.960 --> 0:09:06.680 He did end up forming a church, and it seems 0:09:06.760 --> 0:09:11.560 like maybe eventually he really believed he was a minister. 0:09:13.920 --> 0:09:15.800 He didn't end up forming the church that he and 0:09:15.920 --> 0:09:20.160 Rockwell had talked about. Rockwell was murdered in nineteen sixty seven, 0:09:20.400 --> 0:09:25.200 so that plan was out the window. When Rockwall's murderer, 0:09:25.280 --> 0:09:28.120 John Patler went on trial, Frank testified for the defense. 0:09:29.520 --> 0:09:31.960 A few months after the trial, American Nazi Party member 0:09:32.000 --> 0:09:35.800 Christopher Vivdnyevitch showed up outside Frank's house in Maine. The 0:09:35.840 --> 0:09:39.400 pair had a shootout, but no one was injured and 0:09:39.440 --> 0:09:43.600 no one went to jail. This apparent attempt to kill 0:09:43.679 --> 0:09:47.480 him ended Frank's interest in continued involvement with the American 0:09:47.559 --> 0:09:53.000 Nazi Party, but not with its core beliefs, and the 0:09:53.080 --> 0:09:56.920 idea of forming that church must have still been rattling 0:09:57.000 --> 0:10:03.360 round in his mind too. He lived quietly for a 0:10:03.400 --> 0:10:06.760 few years. As far as I can tell, he pops 0:10:06.840 --> 0:10:09.360 up in some old issues of his local newspaper, the 0:10:09.400 --> 0:10:13.800 Ellsworth American, from time to time. In February of nineteen 0:10:13.840 --> 0:10:16.520 sixty nine, he was offering boxing lessons to local high 0:10:16.520 --> 0:10:20.839 school boys at a theater after school. A few months later, 0:10:20.880 --> 0:10:23.079 he called the fire department after losing control of a 0:10:23.120 --> 0:10:26.440 fire he'd set on his property. 0:10:26.520 --> 0:10:27.120 He says he. 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:30.760 Set the fire to burn the grass on his property. 0:10:31.240 --> 0:10:33.960 I'm not entirely sure what he means by that, but 0:10:34.120 --> 0:10:37.760 it was treated as a perfectly reasonable explanation by the newspaper. 0:10:39.440 --> 0:10:43.200 After the fire was extinguished, firefighters walked the property just 0:10:43.240 --> 0:10:45.880 a double check that there were no lingering embers behind 0:10:45.880 --> 0:10:50.120 the house that could reignite, and they discovered two separate 0:10:50.200 --> 0:10:54.680 cases of dynamite, one inside of a rusty metal container 0:10:55.360 --> 0:10:59.600 and the other hidden under a pile of hay. Frank 0:10:59.640 --> 0:11:02.400 said he had no idea how that got there, and 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:05.600 it wasn't his, and he was very grateful that the 0:11:05.600 --> 0:11:11.199 firefighters found it before something terrible happened. The paper doesn't 0:11:11.200 --> 0:11:15.240 mention Frank's history with dynamite, but. 0:11:15.240 --> 0:11:16.120 Maybe they didn't know. 0:11:18.280 --> 0:11:18.480 Now. 0:11:18.480 --> 0:11:22.280 Remember, Frank Smith owns about six hundred acres of land 0:11:22.720 --> 0:11:26.960 in Ellsworth, Maine. He bought it back in the mid fifties, 0:11:27.679 --> 0:11:31.199 not long after he was accused of several bank robberies, 0:11:32.440 --> 0:11:35.160 and in nineteen seventy he signed over the deed to 0:11:35.240 --> 0:11:38.560 all of his property to a recent law school graduate 0:11:38.600 --> 0:11:43.120 in Rhode Island. He just gave this man hundreds of 0:11:43.120 --> 0:11:48.000 acres of land. Frank's sister, Florence, who had also purchased 0:11:48.000 --> 0:11:51.600 some land in Ellsworth, sold her property to the same 0:11:51.679 --> 0:11:56.520 man on the same day. Frank would later offer the 0:11:56.800 --> 0:11:59.520 vague explanation that the gift had been a sort of 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:08.040 bond for work done that he couldn't repay. The man's 0:12:08.120 --> 0:12:12.520 name was Brian Soreau, at least I think it's Sorow. 0:12:13.800 --> 0:12:16.960 I could only find one recording of someone saying this 0:12:17.080 --> 0:12:21.559 man's name out loud, and that person said Sorrolt, which 0:12:21.600 --> 0:12:24.760 is what it looks like spelled out. But the man 0:12:24.760 --> 0:12:28.720 in the recording also said Pawtucket in the same sentence. 0:12:28.840 --> 0:12:31.720 And I've been informed by the Rhode Islanders and the 0:12:31.760 --> 0:12:35.480 audience that it's Patucket, So I'm not sure we can 0:12:35.520 --> 0:12:41.280 trust this In my quest for accurate pronunciation. I did 0:12:41.320 --> 0:12:44.240 watch a couple of old videos of hockey fights. There 0:12:44.320 --> 0:12:47.040 used to be a Canadian hockey player named Eve Sorow, 0:12:48.200 --> 0:12:53.040 and both the French and English language announcers pronounce it Sorow. 0:12:54.800 --> 0:12:57.200 The name does seem to be generally associated with people 0:12:57.200 --> 0:13:01.120 of French Canadian descent. I really do go out of 0:13:01.160 --> 0:13:03.640 my way to try to pronounce names of people and 0:13:03.720 --> 0:13:07.679 places correctly, but it's an uphill battle when the world 0:13:07.760 --> 0:13:10.480 is full of people and places who proudly wield their 0:13:10.480 --> 0:13:13.760 pronunciation of proper nouns as some kind of weapon in 0:13:13.840 --> 0:13:18.160 an assault against the very idea of phonics. Despite my 0:13:18.280 --> 0:13:21.720 extreme efforts to find recordings of locals saying these things, 0:13:22.720 --> 0:13:25.440 I don't think I'll ever escape the humbling experience of 0:13:25.480 --> 0:13:31.880 the regional shibbaleth. I mean, I'm from Virginia, home of Buna, Vista, 0:13:32.400 --> 0:13:37.560 buck Annen, Batatat, and Stanton. None of those are spelled 0:13:37.559 --> 0:13:40.560 how you think I grew up in Norfolk? 0:13:41.000 --> 0:13:41.480 I get it. 0:13:41.880 --> 0:13:44.320 If you say the R or the L, you're not 0:13:44.360 --> 0:13:50.040 from here. So I've chosen to go with Siro. I 0:13:50.080 --> 0:13:51.080 did my best. 0:13:53.080 --> 0:13:53.920 Now, if you're from. 0:13:53.760 --> 0:13:57.040 Rhode Island, you almost certainly know how that man's name 0:13:57.080 --> 0:14:01.280 is pronounced, because you probably know that Brian J. Sorow 0:14:01.880 --> 0:14:04.760 was elected mayor of Patucket, Rhode Island in nineteen eighty seven, 0:14:05.760 --> 0:14:07.760 and he was still the mayor when the FBI arrested 0:14:07.840 --> 0:14:11.319 him in nineteen ninety one for running a massive extortion, 0:14:11.840 --> 0:14:16.480 bribery and kickback operation out of city hall. But when 0:14:16.520 --> 0:14:19.960 Frank gave him all that land in nineteen seventy, he 0:14:20.080 --> 0:14:23.400 was fresh out of law school. He'd only passed the 0:14:23.400 --> 0:14:27.600 bar a few months earlier. Frank sort of implies that 0:14:27.680 --> 0:14:31.680 the land was payment for legal work, but it's hard 0:14:31.720 --> 0:14:33.920 to imagine what kind of work Sorow could have been 0:14:33.960 --> 0:14:37.920 doing for Frank that would have been worth six hundred 0:14:37.960 --> 0:14:41.200 acres of land in just a few months. As a 0:14:41.240 --> 0:14:45.560 recent law school graduate, he wasn't even licensed to practice 0:14:45.560 --> 0:14:50.000 in the state of Maine. 0:14:50.200 --> 0:14:51.120 Now, I don't want. 0:14:50.920 --> 0:14:55.840 To imply anything I can't prove. Brian Sorow may be disbarred, 0:14:55.880 --> 0:15:00.000 but he's still out there, so I'm not making any allegiance. 0:15:02.040 --> 0:15:05.040 But there are some clues here that Frank hadn't given 0:15:05.120 --> 0:15:07.520 up on the idea that the land could serve some 0:15:07.720 --> 0:15:14.080 criminal purpose. I couldn't find anything directly linking Brian Sorou 0:15:14.160 --> 0:15:18.480 to organize crime, at least not beyond his own racketeering case. 0:15:19.840 --> 0:15:25.320 No one's accusing Sourow of moving money around for the mafia. 0:15:25.840 --> 0:15:30.040 But I did find his father's name in Raymond Patriarch's 0:15:30.160 --> 0:15:35.080 FBI file, the same Raymond Patriarcha who ran the Providence mafia. 0:15:35.160 --> 0:15:39.520 The same Raymond Patriarca who maybe told an FBI informant 0:15:39.880 --> 0:15:44.600 to shoot Frank. In nineteen sixty one, an FBI agent 0:15:44.640 --> 0:15:47.720 wrote a memo about an unsuccessful attempt by their informant 0:15:48.400 --> 0:15:53.239 to get information about Patriarca out of one of his associates, 0:15:54.520 --> 0:15:58.960 a man named a May Sourou. Again, there's just no 0:15:59.120 --> 0:16:02.920 winning with French. I looked at a lot of videos 0:16:02.960 --> 0:16:07.800 of people saying this name. It's Aime, it could be 0:16:08.040 --> 0:16:12.800 m a, could be aim m Ama is what I 0:16:12.840 --> 0:16:17.200 saw most often. Don't email me about pronouncing quebequa French. 0:16:19.240 --> 0:16:23.440 A Ma Soro, Brian's father, and Brian's brother, Stephen Sorow, 0:16:24.240 --> 0:16:29.760 were involved in several massive and very confusing fraud schemes 0:16:29.800 --> 0:16:34.120 over the years. In nineteen seventy nine, A Ma Soro's 0:16:34.200 --> 0:16:36.680 name was on the incorporation paperwork for a company in 0:16:36.720 --> 0:16:40.360 Florida that was formed for the sole purpose of engaging 0:16:40.360 --> 0:16:45.040 in mortgage fraud. His name was actually on the incorporation 0:16:45.160 --> 0:16:48.200 paperwork for quite a few companies in the late seventies 0:16:48.200 --> 0:16:52.520 and early eighties, and most of those companies show up 0:16:52.520 --> 0:16:56.680 in federal court filings in cases for mail fraud, wire fraud, 0:16:56.760 --> 0:17:01.880 securities fraud, mortgage fraud, really any kind of financial crime 0:17:01.920 --> 0:17:04.600 you can think of, and some I hadn't heard of. 0:17:05.800 --> 0:17:10.000 Which is interesting because when Frank Smith did finally get 0:17:10.040 --> 0:17:13.639 around to forming his church in nineteen seventy eight, the 0:17:13.680 --> 0:17:17.040 paperwork filed with the state of Maine lists A May 0:17:17.200 --> 0:17:21.920 Sorrow as the vice president of the church and his son, 0:17:22.000 --> 0:17:40.320 Stephen Sorow was on the board of directors. Now, this 0:17:40.760 --> 0:17:44.240 doesn't fit neatly into my story, and it's not entirely 0:17:44.280 --> 0:17:49.200 about Frank, but it's too weird to leave out. When 0:17:49.200 --> 0:17:52.000 police in Florida showed up to ask questions about bad 0:17:52.119 --> 0:17:54.879 checks that were being deposited by that fake mortgage company 0:17:54.920 --> 0:17:59.880 in nineteen eighty, they didn't find the Sirows. They did 0:18:00.080 --> 0:18:03.679 find a washed up minor league baseball player driving a 0:18:03.720 --> 0:18:08.920 car with a forged registration. Bob Banalowitz played a few 0:18:08.960 --> 0:18:11.760 seasons on farm teams for the Saint Louis Cardinals, but 0:18:12.240 --> 0:18:15.919 he never made it to the majors. His name pops 0:18:15.960 --> 0:18:19.320 up in connection with a couple of pretty serious crimes, 0:18:19.320 --> 0:18:22.760 but I can't actually find any indication he ever served 0:18:22.840 --> 0:18:26.680 time for any of them. But he was definitely arrested 0:18:26.680 --> 0:18:30.960 that day in nineteen eighty The article about this curious 0:18:30.960 --> 0:18:34.800 incident with the bad checks in Florida says police believed 0:18:34.840 --> 0:18:38.080 the mastermind behind the scheme was a known con man 0:18:38.240 --> 0:18:42.520 named Michael Arthur Strauss, but by the time the police 0:18:42.560 --> 0:18:44.400 got there, Strauss. 0:18:44.000 --> 0:18:44.880 Was in the wind. 0:18:46.000 --> 0:18:49.240 A year later, in nineteen eighty one, Banalowitz and Strauss 0:18:49.240 --> 0:18:51.760 were together again, and they were both on the run 0:18:51.840 --> 0:18:55.119 from charges related to a mail fraud scheme in Pennsylvania. 0:18:57.000 --> 0:18:59.760 I think you probably know by now, but part of 0:18:59.800 --> 0:19:03.920 my process means spending a lot of time flushing out 0:19:03.920 --> 0:19:08.040 the details of events I know full well are not 0:19:08.119 --> 0:19:10.720 going to be relevant and they are not getting me 0:19:11.040 --> 0:19:15.639 any closer to finishing the episode. I have reams of 0:19:15.680 --> 0:19:18.800 notes about stuff you'll never hear about because it just 0:19:19.160 --> 0:19:22.880 isn't related to the story. In any way, even by 0:19:22.920 --> 0:19:27.879 my standards, Bob Banalowitz, the minor league baseball player, is 0:19:27.920 --> 0:19:32.200 not a character in Frank's story. I mean, he did 0:19:32.200 --> 0:19:35.080 some fraud with the father of the man that Frank 0:19:35.240 --> 0:19:38.600 gave that land to, but there's no way they have 0:19:38.680 --> 0:19:43.679 any meaningful connection, right. There was no reason for me 0:19:43.760 --> 0:19:45.600 to look up the court records for a lawsuit and 0:19:45.720 --> 0:19:48.240 alla Witz filed against Wynn Dixie after he slipped and 0:19:48.280 --> 0:19:51.640 fell in a grocery store in Florida in nineteen ninety nine. 0:19:51.760 --> 0:19:55.480 But I've got it in my notes, you know, when 0:19:55.480 --> 0:19:58.359 I was poking around learning a little bit more about 0:19:58.400 --> 0:20:03.280 this very tang gentially relevant character, because you never know 0:20:03.320 --> 0:20:09.320 what you might find, and this time I'm glad I looked. 0:20:10.800 --> 0:20:10.919 So. 0:20:10.960 --> 0:20:14.040 In nineteen eighty one, when Manolowitz and Strauss are on 0:20:14.080 --> 0:20:16.679 the lamb after their scheme with this Arose went busted, 0:20:17.720 --> 0:20:22.520 they hid out at a friend's house in Massachusetts, and 0:20:22.600 --> 0:20:25.680 the newspaper later reported that the FBI arrested a man 0:20:25.720 --> 0:20:30.920 named Theodor Green for harboring the fugitives. And that name 0:20:31.080 --> 0:20:34.840 looked really familiar, And it turned out I had it 0:20:34.880 --> 0:20:39.040 in my notes already, But surely it's not the same 0:20:39.080 --> 0:20:42.960 Teddy Green. I'm sure there are plenty of Teddy Greens 0:20:43.000 --> 0:20:45.040 living in the Boston suburbs. 0:20:45.800 --> 0:20:47.199 But what a strange coincidence. 0:20:49.200 --> 0:20:52.080 I know, you know that at this point I forged 0:20:52.119 --> 0:20:55.600 ahead on my mission to waste my own time, and 0:20:55.680 --> 0:21:01.280 sure enough it wasn't a coincidence. The ages matched up, 0:21:01.320 --> 0:21:04.840 which was a good clue. But I think what really 0:21:04.920 --> 0:21:08.160 sealed it for me were the descriptions of Theodore Green 0:21:08.280 --> 0:21:11.640 in those articles written in the nineteen eighties. I mean, 0:21:11.720 --> 0:21:15.320 how many Teddy Greens in Boston could there be who 0:21:15.320 --> 0:21:18.479 had a history of bank robbery and once escaped from 0:21:18.520 --> 0:21:21.439 a Massachusetts state prison by shipping himself out in a 0:21:21.440 --> 0:21:25.640 crate of dirty rags. There's just no way. The Boston 0:21:25.640 --> 0:21:28.960 suburbs are home to two men named Theodore Green, who 0:21:29.000 --> 0:21:31.960 famously tried and failed to escape from Alcatraz on a 0:21:32.000 --> 0:21:33.320 dozen separate occasions. 0:21:34.520 --> 0:21:36.040 It's the same guy. 0:21:36.720 --> 0:21:39.600 The man who is harboring those fugitives in nineteen eighty 0:21:39.600 --> 0:21:44.160 one is the exact same Teddy Green who was accused 0:21:44.200 --> 0:21:48.959 of robbing a bank with Frank Smith in Menford, Massachusetts 0:21:49.760 --> 0:21:54.240 in nineteen fifty two. They were members of the same 0:21:54.280 --> 0:21:58.800 bank robbery gang. All throughout the early fifties, So what 0:21:58.880 --> 0:22:01.359 is Teddy doing back in the story thirty years later. 0:22:03.080 --> 0:22:06.199 It's an accumulation of hints that proves nothing I know, 0:22:07.480 --> 0:22:10.320 but it suggests that Frank never lost touch with his 0:22:10.400 --> 0:22:14.720 old associates even as his interests shifted and his public 0:22:14.760 --> 0:22:18.919 presentation evolved. He may have put on a clerical caller, 0:22:19.480 --> 0:22:24.720 but he's still doing business with the same people. When 0:22:24.760 --> 0:22:28.960 Brian Sirow was indicted in nineteen ninety one, his finances 0:22:29.000 --> 0:22:34.360 were obviously of great interest to investigators. He was accused 0:22:34.400 --> 0:22:37.000 of raking in about a million dollars in bribes and 0:22:37.119 --> 0:22:41.280 kickbacks over just a few short years. They made the 0:22:41.400 --> 0:22:43.960 arrest after they got him on a wire tap accepting 0:22:43.960 --> 0:22:48.720 a bribe, but that wasn't enough. They wanted the whole picture, 0:22:50.000 --> 0:22:56.320 and the whole picture included Frank and Claudia Smith. A 0:22:56.400 --> 0:22:59.960 nineteen ninety two article in the Providence Journal says prosecute 0:23:00.240 --> 0:23:05.439 weren't actually sure where all the money went. Sorow definitely 0:23:05.640 --> 0:23:09.440 pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars, but it didn't look 0:23:09.520 --> 0:23:13.359 like he was spending it. He didn't live a lavish lifestyle. 0:23:14.760 --> 0:23:17.240 He didn't drive a flashy car, or live in a mansion. 0:23:18.480 --> 0:23:19.160 His home was. 0:23:19.119 --> 0:23:23.639 Described as heavily mortgaged, and the missing money wasn't in 0:23:23.720 --> 0:23:29.439 his bank account. Bryan Sirou ended up pleading guilty, so 0:23:29.520 --> 0:23:33.120 there was no trial, and any court filings that might 0:23:33.200 --> 0:23:36.320 exist in that file are in a box on a 0:23:36.359 --> 0:23:40.200 shelf at the National Archives, so there's no chance of 0:23:40.240 --> 0:23:44.000 getting my hands on them anytime soon. All I really 0:23:44.000 --> 0:23:46.720 have to go on here is what the federal prosecutor 0:23:46.760 --> 0:23:51.080 told this reporter in nineteen ninety two. A lot of 0:23:51.080 --> 0:23:54.960 that missing money went directly into a bank account opened 0:23:54.960 --> 0:23:59.560 by Claudia Smith. Soroa was listed as a trustee on 0:23:59.600 --> 0:24:03.480 the account, and he was observed making cash withdrawals from 0:24:03.480 --> 0:24:05.440 it a few weeks. 0:24:05.480 --> 0:24:07.240 After he was arrested. 0:24:10.840 --> 0:24:14.320 Frank Smith never really held a straight job, at least 0:24:14.560 --> 0:24:15.960 not after the nineteen fifties. 0:24:17.320 --> 0:24:18.960 I can't find any evidence. 0:24:18.560 --> 0:24:24.200 That Claudia worked either, but they always had money. Claudia 0:24:24.240 --> 0:24:26.680 told people they didn't need to work because she had 0:24:26.680 --> 0:24:30.439 family money, some kind of large inheritance from oil wells 0:24:30.480 --> 0:24:35.639 on land her family owned. I'm not entirely sure that's true. 0:24:35.800 --> 0:24:39.200 Her family does not appear to have been wealthy, although 0:24:39.200 --> 0:24:42.159 I did find a notice in a newspaper in Alabama 0:24:42.200 --> 0:24:47.840 from nineteen fifty about a pending claim in court. It 0:24:47.840 --> 0:24:50.920 looks like Claudia and her sister shared a one sixty 0:24:51.000 --> 0:24:54.399 fourth interest in a parcel of land in Chalktawk County, 0:24:55.240 --> 0:24:58.119 and one of the other interested holders of that land 0:24:58.240 --> 0:25:01.239 was the Magnolia Petroleum Come. So there may have been 0:25:01.280 --> 0:25:05.240 oil and gas on that land, but I don't think 0:25:05.240 --> 0:25:07.960 it was the kind of oil money that funds you 0:25:08.000 --> 0:25:14.000 for life. But for decades, Claudia Smith and Brian Sorow 0:25:14.320 --> 0:25:19.560 were sharing access to several bank accounts. In nineteen seventy nine, 0:25:19.760 --> 0:25:22.840 when Soirow needed money for a condo development project he 0:25:22.960 --> 0:25:25.679 was working on, he took out a loan from the trust. 0:25:26.920 --> 0:25:30.440 In nineteen eighty six, Sorow's law partner and personal attorney, 0:25:30.520 --> 0:25:35.159 Charles Rogers, borrowed twenty five thousand dollars from an account 0:25:35.240 --> 0:25:39.840 held by Frank Smith's church. There's no evidence either of 0:25:39.880 --> 0:25:44.520 these loans were repaid. Disclosures filed with the State Ethics 0:25:44.520 --> 0:25:49.600 Committee show Sirow borrowed undisclosed sums from the Smiths in 0:25:49.680 --> 0:25:54.520 nineteen eighty nine and nineteen ninety. He refused to comment 0:25:54.600 --> 0:25:57.280 on how much money he borrowed, what it was for, 0:25:57.480 --> 0:26:01.679 and when or if it was repaid. There are a 0:26:01.680 --> 0:26:05.800 lot of unanswered questions about this money, but it does 0:26:05.840 --> 0:26:09.240 start to paint a picture that Frank really was using 0:26:09.240 --> 0:26:12.919 that land exactly how he'd imagined when he proposed the 0:26:12.960 --> 0:26:17.840 idea to George Lincoln Rockwell, make a fake church and 0:26:18.040 --> 0:26:24.560 use it to move dirty money around. Like I said, 0:26:25.080 --> 0:26:29.000 I don't think anyone is outright saying Brian Sirou was 0:26:29.040 --> 0:26:33.879 involved with organized crime, but Frank never really left that world. 0:26:35.480 --> 0:26:39.919 In nineteen ninety two, Frank's church owned three cars, and 0:26:40.000 --> 0:26:45.719 for some reason, he registered them in Rhode Island, not Maine. 0:26:45.840 --> 0:26:49.840 The cars were registered to an address in Patucket, specifically 0:26:50.359 --> 0:26:54.520 to a trailer park owned by lifelong patriarcha crime family associate, 0:26:54.960 --> 0:27:00.880 albo Vitally. According to Claudia Smith's driver's license, that's where 0:27:00.880 --> 0:27:05.760 she lived. Whether she did live there at some point 0:27:05.880 --> 0:27:10.840 or not isn't actually clear. The FBI couldn't find her 0:27:11.000 --> 0:27:14.760 in nineteen ninety two. Frank said she wasn't living with 0:27:14.840 --> 0:27:19.520 him anymore and wouldn't say where she might be. She 0:27:19.640 --> 0:27:22.680 did get two traffic tickets near Frank's home in Ellsworth 0:27:22.680 --> 0:27:26.680 in nineteen ninety four, and the citations indicate her license 0:27:26.720 --> 0:27:31.000 listed a Patucket address. When she died in two thousand, 0:27:31.200 --> 0:27:34.480 she was living in Massachusetts, and I can't find any 0:27:34.480 --> 0:27:38.439 record that the couple ever filed for divorce, and the 0:27:38.440 --> 0:27:41.879